Laurence Fishburne has been cast as the voice of the Silver Surfer in this summer’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Okay.

The first Fantastic Four had some fun moments, though most of it was pretty awful. Lots of forced sentimentality and weak plotting. Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba were miscast as Reed and Susan, though in all fairness they deserve big points for doing the best they could with what little they had to work with. (Are you seriously telling me that the most innovative use of Mr. Fantastic’s powers they could come up with was having him reach across the hall for a new roll when he ran out of toilet paper? Come on!) Michael Chiklis — TV’s The Commish! — and Chris Evans were much better suited to the roles of Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm, with Evans in particular stealing the show with his charisma and charm. Poor Julian McMahon — awesome on the shamefully excellent Nip/Tuck — did his best with the script’s sorry excuse for Dr. Doom, and I hope he gets more to do this time around.

You can watch the film’s trailer here. It looks like a better Fantastic Four film than the first one, even though Weekend at Bernie’s 2 was also a better Fantastic Four film than the first one.

Oh, well. Did you hear about Ed Norton signing on to play the Hulk? Now that’s some awesome news.

Anyway.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer surfs, stretches, burns, turns invisible and drops like a big orange rock onto a theater near you on June 15, 2007.